About 6 or 7 months ago I inadvertently put a D850 battery in my D500 and when I turned it on I got a blinking "ERR" on the top of the top LCD and the camera was a brick. I thought, "oh man, what is going on here?". I put the D500 battery back in and got the same error. I am thinking I probably damaged a circuit board or something. I even did a total factory reset with no luck. I put the camera away and only picked it up again today. By then all the batteries (including the EN-EL18) in the battery grip had discharged to zero. I put both in the charger and when the EN-EL18 got to about 30% i put it back in the battery grip and crossed my fingers. I turned it on and got the ERR alert again and I figured I had to send it back to Nikon, this right after they discontinued it! After about 10 seconds the ERR alert went away and it started working again. I still don't know what went on but I am not complaining!
D500 comes back to life
- Thread starter STM
- Start date
No, I use an EN-EL18 in the battery grip. It takes a BL-5 to mount it but you get higher frame rates and it lasts forever.
I think the best way to avoid such events is to remove the grip when you know you won't be using the camera for a little while. I've read about issues that only had to do with grips, specially if they are not original Nikons. I've seen this happen with my D810 and a "Neewer" grip. If you want to leave it on, make sure to switch the grip off
This one is the Nikon MB-D17.
Having used Nikon F2's, F3HP's, and FE2's with motor drives and the F4E with the integral motor drives, I am just used to larger cameras. For me at least, the ergonomics of my D850, D500 and D750 are just a lot better with the battery grips.